Glenn Greenwald Town Hall Seattle, WA 17 June 2014 Imagine a gigantic vacuum cleaner scooping up all electronic communications. That’s what the National Security Agency does. Think you are safe from NSA snooping? That you can hide behind clever passwords? Think again. The Agency has the capability… Continue reading →
Jeremy Scahill Lincoln Center Fort Collins, CO 9 April 2014 The National Security Beast is a terrifying behemoth that extends its tentacles across the globe. Like a many-headed hydra it grows and grows. It has an insatiable appetite for weaponry. For example, in late 2013, the navy launched the… Continue reading →
Ray McGovern University Temple United Methodist Church Seattle, WA 17 October 2013 What is one to do when confronted by blatant criminal actions and illegalities? Look the other way? Punch out at 5 and go home? That’s not what Edward Snowden did. His disclosures have informed and educated the people… Continue reading →
Dennis Kucinich Santa Barbara, CA February 8, 2013 The U.S. has the world’s most powerful military machine. Its navy controls the seas, its air force the skies. Almost 70 years after the end of World War Two, its armies occupy bases from Germany and Italy to South Korea and Japan. Its CIA-operated… Continue reading →
Medea Benjamin Eugene, OR July 1, 2012 available from Alternative Radio You can listen to Medea Benjamin speak for herself here. Medea Benjamin is a renowned peace activist and social justice advocate. She travels around the world and documents human rights violations. She’s co-founder of Global… Continue reading →
by John Cusack From Truthout Tuesday, September 4, 2012 I wrote this a while back after Romney got the nom. In light of the blizzard of bullshit coming at us in the next few months I thought I would put it out now. ______________ Now that the Republican primary circus is over, I started to think… Continue reading →
Morris Berman Elliot Bay Bookstore Seattle, WA November 4, 2011 available from Alternative Radio You can listen to Morris Berman speak for himself here. From the boarded-up storefronts to foreclosed homes to the homeless and unemployed, the signs of decay in the U.S. are all too apparent. The… Continue reading →
Please watch this short video: Amazing speech of Iraq Veteran Against War. If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy…. The loss of Liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad…. –James Madison Continue reading →
By Jack A. Smith, Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter editor Less than six months before the November presidential elections in an exceptionally distressed United States the narrow, unpleasant parameters of political possibility are emerging. Two alternatives confront the American people, both to the… Continue reading →
Check out this brief and crucial history of the United States… In less than 23 minutes, you’ll get the big picture. Let your life be a friction to stop the machine. Continue reading →
Merry Christmas everyone. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (KJV Luke 2:14)… wouldn’t that be nice to really give peace a chance? For all you theists: Ben Franklin said that God helps those who help themselves. Take a look and listen at what John and Yoko said… Continue reading →
by Jack Smith (in Activist Newsletter) Part 1: Obama’s interpretation of the war President Obama bid farewell to the Iraq war after nearly 9 years of conflict in a November 14 speech to troops of the 82nd Airborne at Ft. Bragg, NC. He virtually damned the war with the faintest of praise. The problem… Continue reading →
Our new Secretary of “Defense,” Leon Panetta, insists, while announcing the supposed end to our war in Iraq, while referring to our soldiers who died there, that those lives were not lost in vain. Yeah? He regurgitates that cheap clause, used again and again since Lincoln famously used it at… Continue reading →
by Fred Nagel Most US citizens don’t know whether to cheer the assassination of US citizen and cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, or not. Apart from the fact that he was a Muslim and wore religious garb, we just don’t know too much about him. What did he say or write that brought on the death penalty? There… Continue reading →
The following is an excerpt from War Is a Lie by David Swanson, who served as press secretary for Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign. He is the cofounder of WarIsACrime.org (formerly AfterDownStreet.org) and was instrumental in exposing the Downing Street Minutes and other evidence of Iraq… Continue reading →
by Jodie Evans Interviewed by David Barsamian Boulder, CO August 7, 2011 available from Alternative Radio Jodie Evans is a veteran activist with more than 30 years experience in organizing for social change. She cofounded Code Pink with Medea Benjamin. They’ve also edited the book Stop The Next War… Continue reading →
by John Glaser appearing in Activist Newsletter, September 9, 2011 The Obama administration has endorsed a plan that would keep 3,000-4,000 American troops in Iraq past the Dec. 31 deadline to withdraw, although the full there will be much larger. Just how large isn’t yet certain, but the numerous… Continue reading →
by Gar Alperovitz, speech delivered at Iowa State University, Ames, IA 7 November 1994 available from Alternative Radio Gar Alperovitz is one of the most highly regarded experts on Hiroshima and U.S. policy. He is professor of political economy at the University of Maryland. His articles appear in… Continue reading →
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: The problems today are not the the evil actions of the bad people, but the appalling silence and inaction of the good people. Linda Milazzo: Peace and non-violent solutions are beyond the capacity of this US government. We The People must govern. As an American, it is my… Continue reading →
Among multiple layers of deception and newspeak, the official Washington spin on the strategic quagmire in Afghanistan simply does not hold. No more than “50-75 ‘al-Qaeda types’ in Afghanistan”, according to the CIA, have been responsible for draining the US government by no less than US $10 billion… Continue reading →
by Chris Hedges, interviewed by David Barsamian Santa Fe, NM 18 May 2011 available from Alternative Radio Chris Hedges is an award-winning journalist who has covered wars in the Balkans, the Middle East, and Central America. He writes a weekly column for Truthdig.org and is a senior fellow at The… Continue reading →
by the late Howard Zinn, speech delivered at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, 21 March 1991 [just after “Operation Desert Storm,” also known as the “First Gulf War,” even though there had been a previous “Gulf War” between Iraq and Iran; the President Bush he refers to is Bush 41] The audio of… Continue reading →
Here is what historian Adam Hochschild said on Democracy Now! about massive graveyards of war dead: This was a thought that occurred to me, walking through the First World War cemeteries. Anybody who’s interested in the First World War eventually goes to the old Western Front in France and Belgium… Continue reading →
Check out Osama bin Laden’s American legacy by Tom Englehardt on his Tomgram blog. “As is now obvious, bin Laden’s greatest wizardry was performed on us, not on the Arab world, where the movements he spawned from Yemen to North Africa have proven remarkably peripheral and unimportant. He helped open… Continue reading →
The death of Osama bin Laden has sparked a debate over whether torture of suspects held at places such as the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay helped track down and kill the al-Qaeda leader. Some claim the mission vindicated controversial Bush policies on harsh interrogation techniques. Yeah… Continue reading →
Amidst all the jingoistic chest-thumping about the assassination of Bin Laden, why not get another perspective? Check out all these articles before joining the woot-woot cheering: Obama has doubled down on Bush Administration policy of targeted assassination, with Jeremy Scahill. “It was some sort… Continue reading →
Check out this on NPR. “As Congress and the White House set a higher priority on cutting the budget deficit, a retired military man sees ways to reap major savings. In a plan he acknowledges as “somewhat radical,” former Army Col. Douglas Macgregor proposes slashing the defense budget by 40 percent… Continue reading →
Check out this little video (with text printed out) and then the whole 14-page analysis by “Mr. Y”. We are underinvesting in the real sources of national power – our youth, our infrastructure and our economy. The United States sees the world through the lens of threats, while failing to understand… Continue reading →
Here is a book by my friend, World War II veteran and long-time peace activist Jay Wenk: Study War No More: A Jewish Kid from Brooklyn Fights the Nazis, reviewed by The Daily Freeman of Kingston, New York. Live televised images of a plane striking 2 World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, triggered… Continue reading →
by Ed Pinkington in The Guardian: Commander in Chief Obama is ultimately responsible for Manning’s treatment, but he says the treatment is “appropriate and meets our basic standards”. Obama was once a professor of constitutional law, and he entered the national stage as an eloquent moral leader, but… Continue reading →
At tax-filing time, why not calculate precisely how much you paid for war in the 2010 tax year, whether you are single, married filing jointly, married filing separately, or head of household: War Tax Calculator Continue reading →
from Democracy Now!, this interview with Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich: “Simply put, the President has no constitutional authority to do what he’s done. He has changed the Constitution, in effect, by saying that he has an executive privilege to wage war. He’s ignored Article I, Section 8. He’s… Continue reading →
Your tax dollars at work Trillions for Iraq and Afghanistan Domestic spending freeze How is the war economy working for you? by Chris Hedges in truthdig: Power does not rest with the electorate. It does not reside with either of the two major political parties. It is not represented by the press. It… Continue reading →
The Kill Team Here’s what’s being done in your name. (Warning! The pictures are disturbing! Viewer discretion is advised.) War crime files and Death zone and Motorcycle kill Continue reading →
by T. Christian Miller and Daniel Zwerdling for ProPublica: More than 2 million troops have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Tens of thousands have returned with a bedeviling mix of psychological and cognitive problems. For decades, doctors have recognized that soldiers can suffer… Continue reading →
by Bob Herbert in The New York Times. “So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here… Continue reading →
by John Nichols in The Nation The grotesque extremes to which Muammar Qaddafi has gone to threaten the people of Libya—and to act on those threats—have left the self-proclaimed “king of kings” with few defenders in northern Africa, the Middle East or the international community. Even among frequent… Continue reading →
”There were alternative forms of intervention that might have been pursued…. This binary choice–do nothing or engage in this kind of an extensive use of force with a relatively open-ended authorization through the Security Council, is a false framing.” Check out a debate on Democracy Now! on… Continue reading →
Amy Goodman interviews Jeremy Scahill. The Obama administration has really escalated the covert war inside of Yemen and has dramatically increased the funding to Yemen’s military, particularly to its elite counterterrorism unit, which is trained by U.S. Special Operations Forces…. The fact is that… Continue reading →
See this short Quantico video, where Daniel Ellsberg remarked that Quantico is our Tahrir Square.” Continue reading →
by Eric Tucker From Associated Press March 20, 2011 2:38 AM EDT WASHINGTON (AP) More than 100 anti-war protesters, including the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, were arrested outside the White House in demonstrations marking the eighth anniversary of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. The protesters… Continue reading →
Tomgram: Nick Turse, The Pentagon and Murder in Bahrain Posted by Nick Turse at 10:00am, March 15, 2011. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has been one busy official of late. Last week, on a surprise visit to Afghanistan, he managed to apologize for U.S. helicopters killing nine boys collecting wood… Continue reading →
As reported by ANSWER coalition (check the link for pictures): On March 19, thousands of people took to the streets to demand an end to U.S. war and military intervention abroad and funding for people’s needs at home. Mass demonstrations took place in Washington DC, San Francisco, Los Angeles… Continue reading →
For jobs, healthcare, education, mortgage relief, housing, infrastructure, environmental protection, veterans benefits, childcare, city and state budget relief–to restore vital social programs and to meet urgent human needs: Bring all the troops and war $$$ home now! Consider, as you file your 201… Continue reading →